The third edition of the Lenormand Revolution deck is now available!  Click here to order! And here’s a preview of the new box design featuring Eugène Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People—a hint at one of the surprises in the latest edition.  The new deck, at 2.5” x 3.5” is larger than previous editions, a change many of you asked for.  A fantastic improvement! For those of you interested in the history behind our bold cover, read on! Liberty Leading the People or La Liberté guidant le peuple was painted by Eugène Delacroix in 1830 and celebrates the French…

Here’s a preview of Le Soleil or the Sun card from The Lenormand Revolution deck (La Révolution Lenormand), for which I’ve done the art in co-creation with the illustrious Carrie Paris. If you’re new to the Lenormand, it’s a card divination system popularly believed to have been designed by the French cartomancienne Marie Anne Adelaide Lenormand (1772–1843), who was counsellor to Joséphine de Beauharnais, Empress of France (the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte).  She also claimed to have advised several leaders of the French Revolution, including Robespierre and Marat. Lenormand historians assert that the 36-card Lenormand deck, known as le petit jeu de Lenormand was, in fact, created…

One afternoon, you’re shopping for furniture when you happen upon a half-insane, poverty-stricken, poetess/carpenter in her rickety Victorian house with oddly picturesque water-damaged drywall.  The woman who lives here appears to have fashioned a delightful little chair, almost as if by mistake.  Madly, she calls it her “Something’s Afoot Chair” and wiggles her eyebrows at you as she presents it, unadorned, in a glare of natural light.  You’re captivated.  It’s perfectly bespoke, a one-of-a-kind piece of furniture with humor!  You must have it! A wooden hanger, complete with its metal hook, forms the top brace of a sloppily whitewashed chair-back.  A wooden…

Listen, I’m voting again for President Obama mostly because 1) reproductive rights are cool and 2) I never thought he was the second coming in the first place.  But, have you seen the Obama Store?  There’s something deeply wrong with a nation when its president attempts to sell branded consumer loot through an online catalog as a part of his fund-raising and messaging strategy. Mouse over “Collections” to choose consumer products designed expressly for you!  What target market do you fall into? Women for Obama, African Americans for Obama, Latinos/Hispanics for Obama, AAPI (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) for Obama,…

(image by Roz Foster) It’s been almost two weeks since I came back from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference in LA, where I arrived with the first draft of a novel for young adults (and up), along with an appetite for learning about the industry.  I came away with fantastic feedback on my work from the highly intelligent, market-savvy and craft-wise Josh Adams (Adams Literary).  I also came away with quite the download on the effect the digital revolution has been having on publishing in general. Every keynote and session I attended was packed with inspiration…

I read the following quote today in June’s edition of Harper’s, from Thomas Frank’s “Easy Chair: The Price of Admission”: “[David] Graeber relates the story of a woman he met who got a Ph.D. from Columbia University, but whose $80,000 debt load put an academic career off-limits, since adjuncts earn close to nothing.  Instead, the woman wound up working as an escort for Wall Street types.  ‘Here’s someone who ought to be a professor,’ Graeber explains, ‘doing sexual services for the guys who lent her the money.’” It was a fitting conclusion to a week spent quizzing composition lecturers and…

In their 2001 bibliographical essay, “Cultural Studies and Composition,” Diana George and John Trimbur contribute to the text A Guide to Composition Pedagogies (Tate, Rupiper & Schick) by chronologically mapping the rise and themes of cultural studies in the composition classroom.  They end with a call to hold a key contradiction in sight as cultural studies within the field of composition studies continues to develop: contributors, such as the authors, who create theory and methods for teaching writing through cultural critique engage in “the production of scholarly commodities” at the same time that their work aims to critique the rhetoric…

Mitt Romney is still having trouble understanding cultural context and target audience in his communication efforts.  At the end of February this year, fighting in the Michigan primary, he tried to convince the working class folks in Detroit that he’s one of them—“a Detroit guy.”  He told them he drives a Mustang and a Chevy pick-up—and that his wife drives “a couple of Cadillacs.”  He almost had them with the muscle car and the truck.  But when he threw in his wife’s two caddies, which she alternates use of between two of their houses, the jig was up. Romney—who made…

Finally, an unanimous decision to observe the situation in Syria has been made by the UN Security Council. Up to 30 UN military observers will be sent to the region. What a relief. We do so desperately need highly qualified analysts to decrypt culturally complicated messages like this one, which emerged from the country on April 12, 2012.

Just as the Iliad and the Odyssey may provide all one needs to know about Ancient Greek mores and the Trojan War, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and Black Friday may provide all one needs to know about the values inherent in 21st century American consumerism and the Walmart Wars. Visiting my parents’ southern Californian home in Porter Ranch for Macy’s Day, I pull into a nearby shopping center after my two-hour drive north from mellow North County San Diego.  There’s always tension here.  It’s not just the holiday.  Sharply featured women wearing red-lipped grimaces threaten me with their waxed,…